More than 2,000 newly released documents related to the investigation into President John F Kennedy’s assassination are notable not just for what they contain – but for what is omitted.
As many experts expected, this latest release by the Trump administration does not answer all lingering questions about one of the turning points in American history – the 1963 slaying of Kennedy in Dallas.
Nor do they fundamentally shift the understanding of what happened that day.
There is no ‘smoking gun’.
But this latest batch does include documents that are now mostly or fully unredacted – original material is included instead of blacked-out or replaced by blank space. The release also includes a number of details likely to interest historians and JFK case watchers.
A US government investigation concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a drifter and former US Marine who at one point defected to the then-Soviet Union before returning to the US, acted alone when he shot at Kennedy’s motorcade from a nearby building.
However, most Americans tend to disagree – over decades, polls have consistently shown that a majority doubt the official story.
The case still prompts questions, along with wild conspiracy theories, more than 60 years later – and the latest release is unlikely to change that. Here are some key takeaways.
Significant – but no bombshells
Several experts praised the release as a step forward for transparency. US authorities previously released hundreds of thousands of documents, but despite years of promises, many have been held back or partially redacted, with officials citing national security concerns.
That means many of the documents have been released before – but that more complete versions are now visible.
In a number of cases, names and addresses of CIA agents, which were previously blacked out, are now public.
Due to the sheer volume of the release, experts are still combing through the documents, but no real earth-shattering stories have been uncovered.
Still, Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and editor of the JFK Facts blog, calls the latest release “the most exciting news around JFK records since the 1990s”.
“Several very important documents have come into public view,” he said.
Morley said that among them are documents further outlining the CIA’s surveillance of Oswald, the extent of which has only become clear in the last few years.
“He’s a subject of deep interest to the CIA” long before the assassination, Morley said.
Intelligence methods revealed
A number of the documents shed light on intelligence-gathering techniques of the time – giving a window into Cold War operations.
The unredacted portions of one document detailed the use of fluoroscopic scanning – the use of X-rays to provide real-time images showing inside an object.
The technique was developed to detect hidden microphones possibly used to bug Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) offices.
The memo is also notable for one of the names in it – James McCord, who would later gain infamy as one of the men who burgled the Watergate complex. The break-in kicked off the unravelling of the scandal that toppled President Richard Nixon.
In a newly revealed portion of another document, the CIA describes a system to secretly tag and identify public phone boxes that are tapped, using a paint only visible under ultraviolet light.
David Barrett, a Villanova University professor and expert on the CIA and presidential power, said the agency is traditionally opposed to the release of any operational or budget details.
“It’s a very good thing for the government to release these documents even if there still may be some redactions,” he said.
Another unredacted memo is a more complete version of a note written by Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger. Critical of the CIA and its role in shaping foreign policy, the newly published parts reveal that the agency had a huge presence in US embassies, even in allied countries such as France.
Schlesinger warned Kennedy about the agency’s influence on American foreign policy. While the document is not directly related to the assassination, it does give historians another piece of information about the rocky relationship between the president and intelligence agencies.
Old theories resurrected
Some well-known online accounts claimed that the recent documents reveal new details about long-alleged plots against Kennedy – even though some of the supposed revelations have been public for years.
They includes several viral posts about Gary Underhill – a World War Two military intelligence agent.
Mr Underhill reportedly claimed that a cabal of CIA agents was behind the assassination, a theory openly published in Ramparts, a left-wing magazine, in 1967. Mr Underhill’s death in 1964 was ruled a suicide, but the magazine cast doubt on that as well.
Photos of a seven-page memo regarding Mr Underhill went viral on Tuesday – but the bulk of it is not new. His story has long been discussed online and the CIA memo mentioning it was first released in 2017.
Just a few sentences on one page of the memo were newly unredacted in the latest release.
And crucially the theory is based on a second-hand account published after Mr Underhill’s death and includes no hard evidence.
However, the story was just one of a number of unsubstantiated theories circulating following the release of the files.
Are the files completely unredacted?
A 1992 law required all of the documents related to the assassination to be released within 25 years – but that law also included national security exceptions.
The push for greater transparency has led to more releases over time – both President Trump in his first term and President Biden, as recently as 2023, released batches of documents.
Ahead of the new release, President Trump said that he asked his staff “not to redact anything” from them.
That doesn’t appear to be entirely the case – the new documents still have some redactions. However, experts were largely in agreement that the latest release was a step forward for transparency.
JFK Files journalist Morley said there are further documents in the National Archives yet to be released, and others held by the CIA and FBI that have not yet been accounted for.
Even though there could be more releases to come – as well as promised drops about the killings of Robert F Kennedy Sr and Martin Luther King Jr – the questions around the JFK assassination will almost certainly continue.
“Whenever there is an assassination there will be debates and to some degree there will be conspiracy theories,” said Barrett, the Villanova historian. “That’s not going to change because of these or any other documents.”
By BBC News
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